Cornish heritage

I was at Kit Hill yesterday looking at the remains of Cornwall’s mining heritage and thinking of how many of my father’s family came from mining families. I wrote the following about my great-grandfather Raphael, also in memory of his nephew James killed in an accident at West Kitty mine on 13th September 1895:

There were no teenage years back then. You grew
Amid the flickering darkness far away
From sun or sea or sky, your school the seams
Of tin and copper worked for wretched pay

You had your dreams, of course, of life above
A better place than misery far below
And hence awhile the Redruth draper’s shop
But times were hard, the profits small, and so

You sold the lot and moved to Wales, but yet
Your fortunes were not made – least not before
Your shop went bust, your first wife died, but then
You prospered debt-collecting from the poor…

How much you must have thought of those you left
Behind, who laboured still in total shade,
And when you heard your nephew crushed and killed
Did you wonder what if you had stayed?